Higher education bore the brunt of budget cuts during the last economic downturn in Colorado, and it looks as if that unacceptable pattern is about to repeat.

It was profoundly disappointing to learn that $37.5 million in state funding for the much-needed science building on the Auraria campus is on the cusp of being stripped from next year’s state budget.

Revised state budget estimates predict less revenue than previously thought — $700 million over the next five years — so cuts are to be expected. But what doesn’t make sense at first blush is how that reduction in revenue would translate into a reorganization of projects on the state’s budget priority list.

When the revenue picture was rosier, the science building was ranked 18th on the legislature’s capital development committee’s priority list. But when money got tighter, it dropped to 31st.

Rep. Jim Riesberg, a Greeley Democrat and vice chairman of that committee, said members took into account not only the importance of projects, but how much money they would require in future years, which also could have low revenues.

Nevertheless, it’s a bitter pill to swallow for leaders of the three higher-education institutions that were to share the building — the University of Colorado Denver, Community College of Denver and Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Understandably, they are fighting the decision with fervor. Standing before backhoes and a hole in the ground where the new, $120 million building was to be built, various education officials spoke Monday in voices tinged with urgency and even anger.

They talked of the fumes that build up in the current science building, and how it is overcrowded. They spoke of how many students of color are served by the campus, and how the schools are training future science and technology workers.

“What occurred is unjust and is a travesty,” said Chancellor M. Roy Wilson of University of Colorado Denver. “It is simply not right.”

Of course, the larger issue at work is the current tangle of constitutional spending restrictions that make the state budgetary process a convoluted exercise. This is another example of how worthy projects get shoved aside when revenues are projected to dip and mandated spending rules make a mockery of representational government.

On Monday, University of Colorado president Bruce Benson, Metro State president Stephen Jordan and Community College System president Nancy McCallin scrambled to try to find a way to keep the project alive. But Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, chair of the Joint Budget Committee, has said the money is unlikely to be reinstated.

There still may a creative way to find money elsewhere. Otherwise, the worthy project will come to a standstill as a concrete foundation with protruding steel girders.

It’s a shame that as Colorado moves toward a high-tech economy in alternative energy, the state isn’t doing more to keep this project on track. This is the sort of building that will produce the scientists who could fill the jobs being created.

At some point, state leaders and voters are going to realize that cutting off funding for higher education is starving the intellectual capital that drives our economy. We certainly hope that happens soon.